1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates generally to hullers, destemmers, and like apparatuses for removing upwanted parts such as hulls and calyxes from fruits and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus for removing hulls, receptacles, involucres, and calyxes (hereinafter referred to as "calyxes") from the pericarps of strawberries and the like (hereinafter referred to collectively as "berries") in a positive and reliable manner irrespective of the shapes and sizes of the berries and the state of adherence of their calyxes.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
In a typical apparatus known heretofore for removing calyxes from berries, a plurality of pairs of parallel rolls are provided horizontally or with a slight inclination, adjacent rolls being rotated in mutually opposite directions, and berries with their calyxes are fed onto these rolls. Furthermore, in order to increase the chances of the calyxes being caught between the rolls, means are provided to increase the frictional force of the cylindrical surfaces of the rolls in some of these apparatus, and, further, swinging brushes are separately provided above the rolls in other apparatuses to thereby impart rolling rotation to the berries.
In this known apparatus, however, it is very difficult to impart rotation smoothly to all of the berries on the rolls and to cause their calyxes to bite into the spaces between the rolls since the berries from which their calyxes are to be removed are not necessarily of spherical shape which is easily rotated, and, moreover, their sizes are not uniform in most cases. Furthermore, the berries on the rolls cannot be easily moved in an intended direction even when they are pushed by a pushing mechanism because of interference mutually between individual berries.
Consequently, not only is efficient removal of the calyxes impossible, but the pericarps or bodies of the berries are easily damaged during the calyx removal work because of the fragile nature of the pericarps.
Furthermore, in the above described known apparatus, even when the calyx of a berry is caught between a pair of rolls, there is a tendency of only one part of the calyx to be thus caught between the rolls because the contact mutually between the rolls is a line contact. Consequently, when the calyx is ripped off from the pericarp, a part of the calyx is left on the fruit.
In view of this problem, there have been apparatuses in which the part of each fruit where the calyx is adhering is cut together with a part of the pericarp by means of a cutting tool at the time when the calyx is caught between the rolls thereby to remove the calyx completely as disclosed in the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 3,519,049. By an apparatus of this type, however, the net yield is poor because a considerable quantity of the pericarp of each fruit is cut away.